Michael Sheridan Pro

Community Supported Film (CSFilm) amplifies local voices in under- and mis-represented communities to effectively communicate their lived realities through documentary filmmaking. Their films are used in local and international Screen&Discuss campaigns to inform public opinion and policy from town halls to the halls of congress.

We strengthen communities by:

CSFilm believes that injustices and hardships are best understood by those local to the issues. We know that if the public learns about people’s challenges from the local perspective, they are better able to demand the right actions from their governments and to support effective humanitarian responses.

The predominance of news and information about others, however, is still produced by outsiders and informed by external self-interest. If crisis, disaster, or war came to your town would you want the world to be informed by locals or outsiders?

Our answer is grounded in the knowledge that high quality locally produced stories provide well informed insights, for concerned citizens and policymakers, into sustainable paths to a more equitable and peaceful world.

Collaborations

We seek to work with other organizations and communities to develop and implement projects that are in line with our mission. Our ideal is to support projects that are locally defined and lead. We are eager to hear from you about how our training, film production and public engagement model can be used to strengthen voices in your community and thereby better inform others about local issues and needs. Please see Voices in Partnership to learn about collaboration.

Initiatives

We also initiate projects which focus on people, places and situations that the US public hears a lot about in the news but seldom understands from the local perspective – as we have done in Afghanistan, Haiti, and the US. In collaboration with local media and community organizations we conduct trainings that strengthen local capacity and in the process produce a collection of films that can be used in the US to inform opinion and ignite action.